The Morning After (Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo)
by InksyPens
Summary: (Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo) The will they, won't they? scene everyone was waiting for.


"Wake up and fuck me or _cut that out_," she snapped.

She'd expected him to roll off the narrow bed into a heap of blankets on the floor, flustered and offended by her proposition as much as her language. She'd expected the awkward stammering for an excuse or apology. She was glad her back was too him. The shame he carried with him out of the Manuscript's party had hung in the Mercedes like a thick fog, and Alex was no good at quelling it. Antagonizing was something she mastered. Teasing was par for the course in her old lifestyle when she quickly learned how to use her body as a means to an end for survival. But she wasn't in the business of absolving others of their sins. Just ask the piece of shits of Ground Zero.

She barely registered her own shock when she realized Darlington did none of the things she expected of him, which was so very unlike the predictable and haughty Darlington. In fact, he hadn't moved from him position at all. Surely he was aware of the hard ridge of him pressed against the curve of ass. The stray hand cupping her breast hadn't so much as flinched. Instead, his movements became daring, more self-assured than she had ever seen him outside of Lethe protocols. With adept fingers, he kneaded the soft flesh of her left breast. His other hand meandered along her thigh and left goosebumps in their wake. In her sleep, her dress hitched up to her hips, not unlike the night before. What got them in this bed in the first place.

"Darlington," she warned, but the name was a breathy groan that sounded barely self-contained. As though it was an immense struggle just to move her heavy tongue to the tune of something coherent.

_Tell me you're still high off of whatever Manuscript slipped you. Tell me this is some kinky form of sleepwalking. _She wanted it to mean nothing, because she knew for a man like Darlington, things like this could mean everything.

"We shouldn't be doing this," he admitted against her shoulder. "It will only serve as a distraction from our duties and my responsibility as your mentor—_Fuck_." Her hips pushed back against him in deliberate timing, effectively ending the dull lecture and eliciting the rare swear that made her blood rush into all the grooves and crevices her body held. His hands gripped her body harder, fingers trembling with waning control.

It was a kind of compulsion that made her want to see him lose control over her. The well-to-do Darlington. The man in control of so much and so little all at once. She wanted him to want the Ivy League polished Alex. The bare arms, clean sweaters, borrowed black dresses that stripped her of confidence and replaced it with pretense. Darlington edged closer each day to scratching the surface her, glimpsing the disappointment beneath and turning away, pretending he hadn't noticed. He wanted more from her in a way that she couldn't give him. He wanted her eager and unafraid. And she could be, but only in this bed.

The first time his lips touched her, it was soft and gentle at the crook of her neck, then her shoulder, and beneath her jaw. Somewhere far away, she noted that he was careful not to undo the work of the ink moths.

He maneuvered his body until it loomed over hers, and she allowed herself a moment to marvel the flexed biceps that supported his weight and bracketed her frame. He often scolded her for her half-ass attempts at exercise and typical college freshman diet, while he dedicated an hour each day to cardio and weights. It paid off. He had a lean figure that held sinewy muscles gracefully. If his hands weren't blocking her arms in, she might reach up and squeeze them. It was a girlish and giddy impulse and not at all the restrained upper hand she wanted to project in this moment. But Alex also hadn't noticed her breaths had come in short gasps until she followed Darlington's line of sight to her chest. He watched, mesmerized at the rise and fall of her breasts covered by the skewed fabric that left half of her bra exposed. The house still held onto the bitter chill of winter, the evidence of which was obvious through the lace cups. Alex thought she knew the look of desire, but it paled in comparison to how his pupils dilated as dark as hers. She wondered briefly if he had ever done this and was torn with assumptions.

Before she could second-guess a decision that would undeniably shift their dynamic, possibly her position in Lethe, she grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him down to her. The moment his lips touched hers, there was no hope left for either of them in fighting this. Had they always felt the pull? She thought no, sure that she found him arrogant and too serious for her liking. She craved levity, like the kind her roommates offered. But maybe she was that levity for him.

Alex was good at telling apart guys who made up for insecurity with bravado from the guys who approached sex almost reverently. As soon as Darlington's tongue slid against hers, she knew exactly which one he was. There was no fight for dominance, none of that erotic novel shit that read like two people trying to eat each other's faces. His mouth moved against hers in blissful, if not a little hesitant normalcy. Her fingers went to his waistband at the same time his teeth caught her bottom lip between them. Quickly, before he could think to stop this, she traced her fingertips along his abdomen, ghosting over the ridges of muscles and perhaps even a scar that sat on his ribs.

He was the first one to break. "Alex, we should—"

"Shut up," she mumbled against his mouth. But his head shook minutely, and he spoke again.

"If Dean Sandow knew—"

"You tell the dean about all of your trysts?"

"He's a lonely man."

That stopped Alex abruptly. She pushed him back just enough to see the small curve of his mouth. "Gross."

Darlington's eyes roamed her face, her neck, her collarbone where just a couple months ago, two snakeheads caressed her skin like a blanket and a warning. The shift in the air was a livewire, edging the between combustion and fizzling out underneath the pressure of the roles they were supposed to play. She beat him to it before his mouth could release the resigned sigh.

"For once, Darlington, stop thinking things through."

"Says the girl who reduced Chaucer to _the Father of Hipster Fuck Boys_."

"Also the girl who stopped you from eating me out in front of an audience last night."

She'd never seen Darlington blush before. Hadn't known he was even capable of it. But the slight tinge of pink over his cheeks won over his wasted effort at suppressing it.

"But feel free to finish what you started." She would be lying if she said she wasn't nervous. Not for what was about to happen, but all the unspoken things between them, and the secrets she hid that a man like Darlington would obsess over. Maybe the sex would be good enough that he wouldn't care who or what she was, as long as she kept putting out. It would be a like a yo-yo, winding him up with desire and unfurling him at the right moment.

"You are crass, you know that?" But he made his way down her body anyway, gliding over her breasts and stomach, shoving the blankets aside until her legs were free and opening to accommodate him. He needn't be careful with his kisses here, where the last of her visible tattoos would be found. She'd never had work done below her waist, though Len had obsessed over Alex getting her labia and clit piercings. She was never more grateful than now that she'd refused. Strait-laced Darlington would have fainted at the sight.

He teased her inner thighs with bites that he soothed with the flat of his tongue before suckling on the skin in such a way there would be marks from the ministrations. It was a prelude. She wanted to watch and she wanted to _feel_, two instincts that required too much of her concentration to do simultaneously. Her body tingled deliciously, setting off goosebumps that ticked in the cold of his bedroom. She had always been silent in bed, not one for embarrassing noises or exclamations, because there was no illusion that the boys she'd been with were interested in her pleasure anyway. So it surprised her when a loud gasp turned into a moan once Darlington's mouth found the junction of her thighs. Through the thin fabric of her panties, he licked and sucked, and Alex had a hell of a time restraining the need that was rushing through her body. Her fingers became twitchy. Her toes curled when Darlington moved her panties aside to press his thumb to her clit and rub perfect circles. He was attentive to all the ways her body jerked and reacted to the slightest changes of pressure and strokes. Did his tongue work out, too? It was firm and relentless, particularly the tip as it caught the edge of her clit and made her cry out a sharp "Fuck!" that broke the sound of her pants and gasps. From that point on, the noises where inescapable. Everything he was doing her was driving her further, louder. His fingers scratched along the outside of her thighs, a sensation she'd never felt before, and one she wanted to feel again and again.

If Grays were allowed to linger around here, they would be clamoring up to the tower in droves. But of course, Darlington had the whole of Black Elm warded, so Alex could look freely at him. His eyes met hers and burned with intensity, without shame, with longing, without reticence. It was all too much and equally not enough. He seemed to read that in her, knowing what she needed to bring the crest crashing down. The first finger slipped inside her easily, followed by a second, working in tandem to make the _come hither_ motion against the front of her inner wall. It was more than enough to send her flailing over the edge, thighs trembling violently on either side of Darlington's head, hands bunching the sheets in her fingers to keep her from throwing them both off of the bed. She bit down on her bottom lip to stifle the scream that was desperate to erupt from her lungs, but Darlington, noticing, growled against her clit where he'd been sucking and pumped his fingers faster until the sound of her moan echoed off of the curved walls.

A sheen of sweat was instantly cooled by the air, but her body was still on fire, burning her from the inside out. She wiped the corners of her eyes where her tears had collected, and he looked at her in some concern, but Alex shook her head, unable to explain that she wasn't crying, per se, but the powerful orgasm has just kind of pulled it out of her.

He sidled back up to her and laid down behind her, pulling her back to his chest as they were when she'd awoken. He threw the blankets over them, pulled her body closer, and they began drifting back to sleep.

"Definitely leave this out of the report," her murmured against her neck.

She smiled then, and felt the calmest and safest she had been in a lifetime.


End file.
